Stone Age Relics from New Guinea

Stone Age Relics from New Guinea • A Prehistoric Mortar from New Guinea” is the title of the main article in the October-December number of the Australian Museum Magazine. Mr. P. D.

McCarthy writes interestingly of the relics found in the Mandated Territory which evidently form part of a megalithic culture once present in Oceania and to which scientists are now devoting a great deal of attention.

There is a fine illustration of a stone mortar which was dredged at a depth of 30ft. in the alluvial bed of Koranga Creek, in the Bulolo district, New Guinea. It was presented to the Australian Museum by Mr. L. V. Waterhouse. ‘‘The performance of an act of magic in a primitive community is no trivial pastime, but is a serious business believed to be an indispensable aid to a prosperous, or even tolerable, existence,” says Miss Elsie Bramell, M.A., Dip. Ed., in an article on ‘‘Magic Among Primitive Peoples.” She surveys the field of black and white—evil and peaceful—magic carried on by native sorcerers in Papua, New Guinea and Australia.

Monsieur Hippolyte Fabre, of La Foa, New Caledonia, died on December 26 at the age of 58.

Rev. William B. Seaton, of the Melanesian Mission in the Solomons, arrived in Sydney by the Malaita on January 15, on his way to England on leave. Mr.